Christian Cawley's Blog, page 35

Doctor Who Costumes Come to LittleBigPlanet 3

Andrew Reynolds is a writer at Kasterborous Doctor Who News and Reviews - All the latest Doctor Who news and reviews with our weekly podKast, features and interviews, and a long-running forum.

Throughout December LittleBigPlanet 3 – the Playstation exclusive puzzle platformer with charming, hand-crafted sandbox elements – will be getting Doctor Who themed costume packs.

The first pack, the Doctor Who Twelfth Doctor Costume Pack is available today and includes a costume for the Twelfth Doctor, as well as one for Clara Oswald, Half Face Man, Skovox Blitzer, and a Dalek costume which is exclusive to the pack.

The next, the Doctor Who Eleventh Doctor Costume Pack, includes a costume for the Eleventh Doctor, as well as an Amy Pond, Silence, Sontaran, and Weeping Angel costume which again is exclusive to the pack, which is available 8th December.

Following on from that comes the Doctor Who Tenth Doctor Costume Pack, which naturally includes the Tenth Doctor in Sackboy guise as well as costumes for Rose Tyler, Cyberman, Ood, and a TARDIS Costume exclusive to the pack, which arrives 15th December.

And then, as Christmas draw in, as too comes the Doctor Who Fourth Doctor Costume Pack, which again comes with the titular Doctor as well as Sarah Jane, Davros, Nimon, and K-9 Costume which is another pack exclusive, which arrives 22nd December.

You can also spruce up your desktop with some new Doctor Who/LittleBigPlanet themed wallpapers, showcasing the heroes and villains of the show.

LittleBigPlanet 3 is available on PS3 and PS4 now.

The post Doctor Who Costumes Come to LittleBigPlanet 3 appeared first on Kasterborous Doctor Who News and Reviews.

Out Now: Short Trips – The Other Woman

Philip Bates is a writer at Kasterborous Doctor Who News and Reviews - All the latest Doctor Who news and reviews with our weekly podKast, features and interviews, and a long-running forum.

The latest Short Trips audio from Big Finish, featuring Jon Pertwee’s Third Doctor, is out now.

The Other Woman is written by Philip Lawrence and directed by the lovely Lisa Bowerman. It’s the eleventh title in the range’s fifth series, and is narrated by Katy Manning, who plays the Doctor’s faithful companion, Jo Grant. So who exactly is the Other Woman…?

UNIT is called in when an alien escape pod brings a woman to the Kent countryside. The Doctor offers to repair her stricken, dimension-hopping ship, seeing an opportunity to escape his exile. But while Callandra charms the Doctor and the other men of UNIT, Jo is less trusting. Are her suspicions well-founded or is there another green-eyed monster at work?

The Short Trips line began life as short story collections, but they regenerated into an audio series before settling into its current incarnation as a download-only range.

The Other Woman is out now for just £2.99, and you can expect a review of the story soon. The next Short Trips title, Black Dog, is a Fourth Doctor tale, narrated by Louise Jameson,  and is expected to be released at the end of this month.

The post Out Now: Short Trips – The Other Woman appeared first on Kasterborous Doctor Who News and Reviews.

Who are the Husbands of River Song?

Billy Garratt-John is a writer at Kasterborous Doctor Who News and Reviews - All the latest Doctor Who news and reviews with our weekly podKast, features and interviews, and a long-running forum.

River Song is back.

Now, you’ve had either one of three reactions to that statement. Let’s assess each of these emotional scenarios and impose a purely hypothetical approximation of what kind of fan you are.

1. “YES, OMG I’M SO HAPPY”; if you felt like this upon hearing about River’s dominant return, you have most likely been a fan for the past eight or nine years. Failing that, you are a long time aficionado of the show, but you count stories like Time of the Rani and Love and Monsters as, “a camp bit of fun” that you adore openly.

2. “Meh”; my ghosts in your machine are telling me that your favourite Doctor is either Patrick Troughton or Christopher Eccleston and you regard The Day of the Doctor as a massive let-down. Also, you used to have a massive interest in the show, but as of late, that has waned to just the occasional click on Gallifrey Base’s spoiler section.

3. “%$*&@+”; you’ve been a fan since the early nineties. Perhaps you grew up with the last season and a half of the classic series run? You believe that the best things to happen to Doctor Who in the last ten years can be found betwixt the plastic shell of a Big Finish audio,and so, in turn, you bank account looks as empty as the average Big Brother contestant’s head.

Brilliant. So I’ve either just read your mind or alienated 50% of the people reading this article. Ain’t the Doctor Who fan community great?

The Husbands of River Song has been named as this year’s Christmas Special (rumoured to be broadcast at 5:15 on Christmas Day). But who are these self decreed suitors for Lady Song’s hand? Well…

Upon hearing that Matt Lucas and Greg Davies were appearing in this year’s special, I was delighted. I love both men’s work and I’m glad Matt Lucas has been selected for a role outside of a Children In Need miniscene. Greg Davies cuts an imposing figure, so his role better be freaking sweet. Alas, Christmas Specials often have a tendency to cripple and waste the chance to have genuine talent feature in their stories (see Bill Bailey).

I’m gonna call it and suggest these guys are the husbands of River Song. Spread across time and space, she has woven a plot and played the long game by ensnaring unsuspecting, bumbling men and marrying them, thus making her a strong female character, right Steven? Cos that’s how you do it.

Clearly the Doctor is going be play a part in this husband lark. Regardless of Moffat’s comments towards River not recognising the Doctor at the start of the story, we already know that at some point she clocks onto it. Maybe we’ll see some hilarious marital banter between her, Capaldi, Lucas and Davis. HAHAHAHAHAHHAHA! SUCH FUN!!!

*clears throat*

Anyway, what’s do you guys think? What are you expecting? Should we anticipate a deeper sub-plot?

Or are we having a laugh? It’s Christmas after all.

The post Who are the Husbands of River Song? appeared first on Kasterborous Doctor Who News and Reviews.

Advanced Review Round-Up: Hell Bent

Andrew Reynolds is a writer at Kasterborous Doctor Who News and Reviews - All the latest Doctor Who news and reviews with our weekly podKast, features and interviews, and a long-running forum.

Once you leave home, you can never really go back again. That old adage goes double if you happen to have stolen a TARDIS and exited stage left because of some business involving a deadly premonition about a hybrid.

That kind of departure raises a lot of questions that time has failed to answer; and, if the early spoiler free reviews go for Hell Bent, not all of them lead to a satisfying conclusion.

Perhaps because our expectations were raised high above the clouds thanks to last week’s stunning, brilliant Heaven Sent (feel free to add your own adjective to that list), but, despite some sterling storytelling, Den of Geek found it a tad frustrating.

“Hell Bent, then, rounds off Doctor Who series 9 – well, at least until Christmas – with a coherent, nerdy, often brilliant, sometimes a little frustrating, but always watchable piece of television. This series, more than any other in his tenure for me, Steven Moffat has really clicked everything into place. Hell Bent suggests he’s got many more interesting Doctor Who stories to tell, and hopefully, Peter Capaldi will be there every step of the way to help tell them.”

However, according to the Metro, there might be a moment about midway through that could prove to be even more controversial amongst fans than last year’s finale.

“The ending is both uplifting and utterly heart-breaking, but I suspect the biggest and most controversial talking point is one that occurs mid-episode. Remember the furore last year over the appearance of the Cyber-Brigadier? That split Who fandom down the middle. This one is potentially even more divisive. You have been warned.”

In tying together all the loose threads of this series and possibly other minor events from previous series, Blogtor Who found the conclusion was a lot more open ended than the absolute nature of the questions led us to believe.

“Ultimately, Hell Bent is not as good as Heaven Sent (and I’m guessing that’s what you really want to know). But how could it be? That’s really not putting it down. It does, however, live up to its promise – The Hybrid is revealed and we witness just how powerful and how far it’s willing to go. The ongoing hyperbole about its intentions are well-founded but does the Doctor get his revenge on the Time Lords for what they did to Clara? In a way, yes, and, in a way, no. There’s an odd open-handedness about proceedings at the denouement as if it’s a new start for everyone involved. As if the slate has been wiped clean. Which is not a bad way to go about things at all.”

So from the advance reviews, it seems like the episode is both exciting, brilliant, moving and also oddly open-ended not as much of a thrill-rush as Heaven Sent.

We’ll have the answers (or not) when Hell Bent airs Saturday 5th December at 20:00 on BBC One.

The post Advanced Review Round-Up: Hell Bent appeared first on Kasterborous Doctor Who News and Reviews.

Big Finish Review – “Jago & Litefoot & Strax: The Haunting”

Chris Swanson is a writer at Kasterborous Doctor Who News and Reviews - All the latest Doctor Who news and reviews with our weekly podKast, features and interviews, and a long-running forum.

Strax, the Sontaran butler to Victorian investigator Vastra and her wife Jenny, suffers a disorienting attack and mistakes Jago & Litefoot for Jenny and Vastra and moves into Litefoot’s home. Together, they are on the trail of a creature that is stealing brains, which may or may not be linked to a haunted house in London…

I really can’t stand the Paternoster Gang. Oh, they’re okay in small doses, but Madam Vastra isn’t that interesting of a character to me, and Jenny is about as bland as flavorless yogurt. But Strax, oh, Strax. He makes any of their scenes worthwhile. Yes, even with him a little goes a long way, but in the right circumstances, with the right material, he’s a great character.

This is Big Finish’s second ‘toe in the water’ for the new series and it’s exactly what I wanted in a Strax story. He gets some great comic lines, he gets to hold his own in a fight, and he has some wonderful interactions with the other Victorian characters in the Doctor Who universe; namely Henry Gordon Jago (Christopher Benjamin) and George Litefoot (Trevor Baxter).

The story features our titular characters thrown together after Strax (Dan Starkey) is accosted by a strange woman. They soon find themselves teaming up to investigate a series of ‘orrible murders, which draws  them ever closer to a haunted house. Throughout, there’s plenty of banter and delightful moments of laugh-out-loud comedy.

Just about everything in this story is perfect. Baxter, Benjamin, and Starkey  own every scene they’re in, which is saying something, and Carolyn Seymour brings just the right level of charm and menace to the role of Mrs Multravers. Further, the idea of Strax believing Jago and Litefoot to be Jenny and Vastra is genius (and was suggested by Steven Moffatt, apparently). Even the story itself, which had plenty of potential to be another paint-by-numbers ‘ghost that turns to be an alien’ plot is brilliantly executed.

Your enjoyment certainly isn’t limited to your field of reference either; you can view The Haunting as a classic J&L story (and it’s certainly that), a good new series tale, a great jumping-on point for anyone yet to be charmed by our favorite Victorian gentlemen, a comedy, a horror – you decide. However, what isn’t up for debate is just how much fun it is. Really, I can’t recommend it highly enough.

Also starring Conrad Asquith as Inspector Quick, and Stephen Critchlow as Marvo, Jago & Lightfoot & Strax: The Haunting – written by Justin Richards and directed by  Lisa Bowerman, who also plays Ellie – is available now from Big Finish on CD for £14.99 and Download for £13.99.

Head over to Big Finish now to further explore the adventures of Jago & Litefoot.

The post Big Finish Review – “Jago & Litefoot & Strax: The Haunting” appeared first on Kasterborous Doctor Who News and Reviews.

BBC Christmas Trailer: The Husbands of River Song Clips and Sprout Boy

Andrew Reynolds is a writer at Kasterborous Doctor Who News and Reviews - All the latest Doctor Who news and reviews with our weekly podKast, features and interviews, and a long-running forum.

Sprout Boy and the Doctor would like to welcome you to a very merry Christmas on the BBC!

Yes, our Doctor has teamed up with an anthropomorphised vegetable who the world actively hates to spread a tolerant message of togetherness this yuletide period – no matter how bad you might taste!

Peter Capaldi narrates a new animated trailer which not only features a very cute sprout but also a rather good likeness of the man himself – who can be seen rallying the selected heads of entertainment around the table before pulling a cracker with EastEnders equally animated Dot Cotton.

Ladies and gentlemen, Christmas has arrived. Please meet Sprout Boy…

Posted by BBC One on Tuesday, 1 December 2015

 

Also, the BBC have released a video featuring the many highlights on television over the festive period including, of course, the Doctor and River from the Christmas Day special, The Husbands of River Song.

Included with the Doctor and River’s exploits are clips from Sherlock, Luther, Shaun the Sheep, EastEnders, Strictly Come Dancing, Open All Hours and many, many more.

The post BBC Christmas Trailer: The Husbands of River Song Clips and Sprout Boy appeared first on Kasterborous Doctor Who News and Reviews.

Corey Taylor’s Doctor Who Chapter

Simon Mills is a writer at Kasterborous Doctor Who News and Reviews - All the latest Doctor Who news and reviews with our weekly podKast, features and interviews, and a long-running forum.

Classic Rock magazine have published an interview with Slipknot frontman Corey Taylor in which he talks about his love of Doctor Who and lists all the Doctors in his order of preference. We like lists. Lists are cool. I wear a list now… Actually, no, I don’t. I got carried away. Sorry.

I am a big fan of Corey Taylor and both his bands Slipknot and Stone Sour, so imagine the state of my brain when the news broke a few months ago that Taylor would be providing vocals for a Doctor Who alien creature! Talk about worlds colliding with the duality of this psychosocial sci fi/heavy metal crossover!

Anyway, Taylor dutifully turned up in Cardiff, recorded 40 minutes of his trademark screaming vocals, and had his tour of the studios and TARDIS interior set along with the Doctor Who Experience. We’ve already covered his appearance in Doctor Who as The Fisher King in Under the Lake / Before the Flood, so I won’t dwell on that, suffice to say that Taylor heard nothing more from the production team after recording his vocals until he saw the episodes broadcast – but he was ecstatic about the whole experience:

“The cool thing is that I didn’t see or hear anything more until the day that the episode aired. Me and the whole family were sitting in my house in Iowa watching it and waiting for the growl to come out. It’s one of the coolest things I’ve ever got to do. It was even cooler to see my name in the credits. That was just ******’ religious.”

Taylor also reveals just how much of a fan of Doctor Who he really is. He has intimate knowledge of the history of the show, including the Peter Cushing films, so when asked to list the Doctors in order of preference he starts out thusly:

“Sure, but it comes down to this though: are we just talking TV series or do you want to delve into the serials or Peter Cushing and the two movies? Because I can talk Doctor Who all goddam day. That first Cushing movie, Doctor Who And The Daleks [1965], is a lot of fun. Peter Cushing was one of my favourite British actors and I think he played the role to the bone. If there was ever a person who I could’ve seen taking over from William Hartnell, besides Patrick Troughton, it was Cushing. But he made the left turn and kept doing the Horror movies.”

I won’t repeat much more from the interview here, suffice to say that he shows great knowledge and insight about the show. Lamenting the fact that Peter Davison suffered for having to fill Tom Baker’s very big shoes and that poor old Colin Baker “freaked me the **** out”, comparing his early run as being dark and similar in that way to Peter Capaldi’s first season.

One other quote I’ll give you before leaving, is Taylor’s thoughts on why doesn’t like the Sonic Sunglasses:

“Maybe it’s because I’m such a cynical ***** of a fan, I’m so used to seeing the Sonic Screwdriver. We sci-fi fans can’t embrace anything new, we have a very hard time with that.”

So, there you have it! Not only is Corey Taylor one of the great heavy metal vocalists of our times, but he’s ONE OF US. A sci fi fan to his metal core who likes to dress up and play at being the Doctor!

Oh, and before I forget… RRRAAAAAWWWWRRRRRRRRRRR!

The post Corey Taylor’s Doctor Who Chapter appeared first on Kasterborous Doctor Who News and Reviews.

TARDIS Tours Return to the Doctor Who Experience!

Philip Bates is a writer at Kasterborous Doctor Who News and Reviews - All the latest Doctor Who news and reviews with our weekly podKast, features and interviews, and a long-running forum.

If your festive treat this year is a visit to the Doctor Who Experience, you’re in for an even greater present than expected – because the TARDIS Set Tours are back!

The Experience is right next to BBC Roath Lock Studios, where Doctor Who is made, and after a few minutes’ walk, you enter the studio where the actual TARDIS is situated. In small groups, you enter the Police Box… and find out that it’s bigger on the inside.

This is the actual time-space ship that’s appeared in the show since 2012’s Christmas special, The Snowmen, but keen viewers will know that it’s been updated since then to accommodate Peter Capaldi’s tenure. This is the first opportunity to see the set since it was updated for the start of the current season.

Fans are welcomed onto the TARDIS during this brief break in recording, so unfortunately, you’re unlikely to bump into the Doctor.

Still, it’s a dream come true!

And, of course, alongside those in the Experience itself, this is the set the Twelfth Doctor appeared on when filming the Doctor Who Experience’s very own adventure last year. Tours are running from Wednesday 9th December 2015 through to Sunday 3rd January 2016 (please check seasonal opening times during this period as on some days the Doctor Who Experience will be closed – for instance, Christmas Day during which the staff are too excited about The Husbands of River Song to work).

Tickets will go on advance sale on Thursday 3rd December through www.doctorwhoexperience.com and on 0844 801 2279 (calls cost 7p per minute plus your network access charges).

Existing ticket holders for dates across this period can upgrade their tickets via the same channels.

The post TARDIS Tours Return to the Doctor Who Experience! appeared first on Kasterborous Doctor Who News and Reviews.

Heaven Sent: Review Round-Up

Andrew Reynolds is a writer at Kasterborous Doctor Who News and Reviews - All the latest Doctor Who news and reviews with our weekly podKast, features and interviews, and a long-running forum.

Wow. Where do you even begin? In the finest episode of the series thus far,the  Doctor Who crew have delivered something utterly brilliant and unique; and it has warranted some of its most uniformly positive reviews so far.

Calling Heaven Sent ‘an instant classic’ the Radio Times lavished well-deserved praise at the feet Peter Capaldi.

“This is Peter Capaldi’s hour and he has earned it. OK, the running time is five minutes shy of one hour, but this brilliant, bold, extended episode is a one-man show – a tour de force from the magnificent Capaldi. This year he has made the role his own, subtly made his cranky interpretation more loveable, and now he’s been rewarded with the chance to shine with no one else to play off. Almost.”

Sharing Radio Times sentiment, Digital Spy saw their ‘instant classic’ and raised them a ‘mind-bending masterpiece’ praising the sheer ‘balls’ of the Doctor Who production team and the BBC in choosing to follow the fluffy frock-a-thon Strictly Come Dancing with this dark, experimental mystery.

“’Heaven Sent’ is brilliant, but it’s also about as far from big, broad, family-friendly entertainment as you can get. The show’s been obtuse and a little odd before, but nothing quite like this, and its rejection of the standard Doctor Who trappings might be too much for some.

“But if you’re willing to see past that and embrace the weirdness, then you’ll end up captivated. Because this is demanding and intelligent science-fiction, the likes of which BBC One should be commended for airing in any slot – let alone straight after we’ve watched Peter Andre dance the American Smooth.”

Settling on a sole headlining adjective, the AV Club took the time to unpick the masterful character work at the heart of this ‘perfect’ episode – reinforcing Clara’s fatal mistake in last week’s Face the Raven.

“The deconstruction of how the Doctor’s blind leap out the window is anything but that is a marvelous bit of fun…The episode doesn’t even hint at this connection, but it’s interesting to look at how the Doctor’s decision-making process works in the light of what happened to Clara in “Face the Raven.” Even those of us who have been traveling with the Doctor for years—companion and audience alike—could so easily miss the insane amount of strategic thinking that goes into the Doctor’s every move, and so it would be tempting to think that it would be possible to replicate that for oneself. That was part of Clara’s mistake last week, after all.

 

“But the Doctor doesn’t just lead a charmed life, as really he’s two different kinds of genius. He’s a brilliant enough lateral thinker to always find the hidden alternative, and his brain is a powerful enough processor to work through all the variables to know whether his plan will work before he puts it into action. To borrow and twist Arthur C. Clarke’s old line, any sufficiently prepared plan is indistinguishable from magic.”

Another illusion that catch the eye of Den of Geek was the intricate puzzle work at the heart of the episode – which wasn’t quite as diminished (or not as hurt as Den of Geek maintains) as you would have thought given the fairly careless way the BBC have handled spoilers this year.

“This is Steven Moffat on very good form. He’s being confident and clever with time, without zipping backwards and forwards and asking us to hold on. There’s an inherent trust that the audience is on board with what he’s doing, and – in a recurring theme this series – there’s a genuine gamble with format and story.”

Giving the episode the five star treatment, Games Radar, looked ahead; hoping to tease out just what lies ahead for the Doctor, the Hybrid and Gallifrey itself.

“Regardless, “Heaven Sent” stands as the best episode of the season so far: madly surreal, ingeniously baffling, immensely creepy and downright gruelling in its latter stages, with a tremendously impactful payoff – that final reveal of the citadel of Gallifrey is even more gobsmacking than the death of Clara. Whether it will repay repeat viewings is uncertain, as its secrets are a present you can only unwrap once.  But on a first watch, it’s simply breathtaking.”

Although perhaps in those sterling last moments we were too swept up in the actual return of the Doctor to his home planet that we may have overlooked some of the bumps in the road along the way to that stunning conclusion.

That’s something that niggles at Kaitlin Thomas over at TV.com.

“I mean, saving the Time Lords was a pretty big deal and something that involved every incarnation of the Doctor. For that reason alone, their return deserved more than what happened here. The fact that the BBC carelessly revealed in the logline for “Heaven Sent” that the Doctor would be returning to Gallifrey, however, tells me that the folks involved with the show don’t agree and didn’t think the Time Lords’ return was particularly noteworthy, and if that’s the case, then I can understand why there’s been little build up. But to me as a fan, it feels a bit like we’ve been cheated out of a really great story. And in hindsight, it makes episodes like “Sleep No More” a little harder to swallow.”

So what did you think of Heaven Sent? Do you think Hell Bent will top it? Just how great was Peter Capaldi? And did the ending right the niggles along the way?

The post Heaven Sent: Review Round-Up appeared first on Kasterborous Doctor Who News and Reviews.

Brick by Brick: See Life-Sized TARDIS Built in Two Minutes!

Andrew Reynolds is a writer at Kasterborous Doctor Who News and Reviews - All the latest Doctor Who news and reviews with our weekly podKast, features and interviews, and a long-running forum.

Little interconnected blocks of pure imagination LEGO is the kind of colourful blank slate that inspires creative bods to erect superlative structures – and what do creative types love? Doctor Who that’s what!

If you happened to wandering around the halls of the Doctor Who Festival last month, you couldn’t have failed to notice the outstanding life-sized TARDIS constructed entirely out of uniformly blue blocks (well, with a touch of black and white too).

So impressive was the structure that even the Twelfth Doctor himself Peter Capaldi had his picture taken next to the tribute to his ride.

Well now you can see just how a ten thousand blocks and a lot of patience went to creating this feat of structural engineering in this video.

Impressive stuff, I think you’ll agree but don’t let the lack of a dedicated LEGO building team, a workshop, concept drawings, scaffolding and lot of cups of tea (probably) put you off creating your own Doctor Who themed LEGO creations.

After all, all you need to do is fix one brick to another and you’re away…

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